Driving in the twilight years

It’s a conversation that involves diplomacy, compassion and, most of all, resolve.

And after noticing their mother’s mental and physical decline, it was a conversation that Trisha Davis and her sister, Jan Willard, desperately needed to have with their Mama, Freda Dales.

They had to take matters into their own hands.

That meant taking the car keys out of their mother’s hands.

“It was on my heart for so long, and it was so hard,” Davis said on a sunny afternoon last week as she sat with her sister and their mother in a gazebo at Springwood Assisted Living in Burlington. Dales was moving in that day. “I told Mama the truth: If she hit and killed someone, it wasn’t just on her, it was on me. I told her I knew she wasn’t able to drive, and that transferred the burden on me. I would be responsible for someone's death. She cried, and Jan cried, and I cried.

“And Mama was angry.”

“I really was,” Dales nodded.

THE THORNY ISSUE of elderly drivers has come to the forefront in Alamance County in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Barbara Bigelow Wyatt, 78, of Greensboro was sentenced to probation for hitting Christopher Scott Askey, 23, of Mebane on Sept. 4 with her SUV as he was walking at a crosswalk on North Third Street at West Center Street. Askey died the next day at Duke Hospital in Durham.

Wyatt left the scene, later saying she did not know she had hit Askey. Her attorney said she has early onset dementia. She cannot drive again.

On July 6, Burlington police issued a silver alert regarding an elderly driver who went missing while on his way to pick up his wife from a medical appointment. Police said that he, too, had early onset dementia. He was found safe.

To be sure, AAA says, seniors as a group are safe as they tend to wear their seat belts, shun drinking and driving, and obey the speed limit.

However, visual, cognitive and physical skills decline with age, and conditions such as arthritis can make it difficult for some seniors to drive safely.

Once drivers turn 66, they are required to renew their licenses from the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles every five years. The process includes a vision test and, depending on circumstances, a written test along with a driving test. Restrictions can be placed on licenses, such as:

Requiring eyeglasses, corrective contact lenses or bioptic telescopic lenses to be worn at certain times;Permitting driving from sunrise to sunset only, or prohibiting driving during rush hour;Restricting driving to the geographical area in which a person is permitted to drive, or prohibiting freeway driving;Requiring special mechanical devices, or an additional side mirror on the vehicle; andRequiring extra support to ensure a safe and correct driving position.

Despite restrictions, family members often will notice that a loved one should not be on the road. If an elderly person is unwilling to give up his or her driver’s license voluntarily, there are steps people can take, namely contacting the DMV.

The DMV has a Medical Review Process that begins with a person filling out forms that can be found online at https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/driver/medical.

A staff of licensed physicians and nurses conducts thorough reviews of medical records and statements, along with driving records, and provides a decision as to what, if any, restrictions should be placed on a driver's license, the DMV says.

The forms cannot be filled out anonymously.

“We recognize that this is hard,” said Patrice Bethea of the DMV. “It is hard to be in this situation, and some people don’t want to be the ones to take the keys. People should feel free to reach out to the DMV if they feel a family member needs an evaluation.”

Steve Hahn, a spokesman for the North Carolina chapter of the AARP, said talking to a senior about giving up driving privileges is “one of most difficult conversations someone will ever have.”

To that end, AARP offers an online seminar called We Need to Talk, which gives advice on how to assess an older driver's situation and how to address it. It can be found at www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/we-need-to-talk/?intcmp=EDO-DSP-PR-WNTT.

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Davis was desperate to get her mother off the road, so she disabled their mother’s car by unhooking the battery cable and making other adjustments.

“I came in one one evening, and she had a friend out there working on the car,” she said. “I went running.”

She pulled the friend to the side and said, “Oh, you can’t do that! Mama isn't safe to drive right now.”

“She seemed a lot more like herself,” Davis said. “I let her drive a few places here and there.”

Then, one day, she hit a fence and tore the bumper off her car. The next day, she became lost while driving in Liberty.

And the very next day, Davis struck up a conversation with another customer at Wal-Mart. The woman, for whatever reason, began talking about her son, who was a road construction worker.

He had died after an elderly driver hit him.

“He never even knew that he had hit a person,” she said.

Davis decided that it was time her mother surrendered her car keys, this time for good. She called her sister over. They sat down with her mother and told her she could not drive anymore.

That was the aforementioned day that Davis, her sister and their mother cried.

“A lot of adult children are going through this, and they don’t really know what to do,” she said. “It is a lot easier to raise your child and tell them ‘No’ than to raise your parents and tell them ‘No.’”

For her part, Dales finds not being able to drive frustrating, particularly when she finds she needs something and, for a second, thinks she will drive to get it before realizing that she can’t.

But she said she understands why her daughters had that conversation with her three years ago and why they took her keys away.

“It was the right thing to do,” she said. “I had had some spells, so I had to give them up.”

Reporter Bill Cresenzo can be reached at bcresenzo@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3041. Follow him on Twitter at @BillCresenzoTN.

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